Blissfully ignorant

IT IS COMPLETELY unacceptable that the Police Service Commission (PSC) has allowed the three-year term of Gary Griffith as Commissioner of Police to expire without providing any clarity or guidance to the public as to its ongoing recruitment efforts for the post of top cop.

The need for confidentiality in the recruitment process is not inconsistent with fulfilling the basic requirements of transparency. This is a matter that affects the top law-enforcement official in the country, an issue of the greatest public interest.

Former chairman of the PSC, Prof Ramesh Deosaran, has called for clarification. Another former chairman, Nizam Mohammed, has noted there must be a clear signal that someone is in charge.

The PSC this week had a responsibility to issue, at minimum, a simple statement confirming what measures had been put in place pending the completion of its recruitment process.

Instead, we have been left to surmise from Mr Griffith himself that he has been authorised to act in the post – though for how long and under what conditions none can or will say. He has declined to release the correspondence sent to him on the issue. And pertinent state officials have given journalists covering this story the runaround.

The failure to be transparent has consequences, as underlined by the fact that the police issued a statement on Thursday describing Mr Griffith, confusingly, as the “Commissioner of Police,” even as he has purportedly been appointed to act.

The PSC’s silence is bad enough on its own terms. It is worse when considering the many issues that now emerge, given the current situation.

Questions have been raised in the public domain about Mr Griffith’s status as a former soldier in light of the requirement for a CoP to have 15 years of experience in “law enforcement.” One legal commentator has suggested the Defence Force does not enforce law, and therefore the eligibility of Mr Griffith, who was never a police officer, might be in doubt.

Others have raised questions over the nature of the role to be played by the Office of the President when presented with a list of candidates to act as CoP under the newly amended appointments process.

At the same time, the current situation may not be entirely of the PSC’s making.

Early last year, the commission approved an unnamed firm to run the recruitment process and signed a contract on July 24, 2020. Recommendations were expected by December 2020.

However, the recruitment framework was abruptly changed this June by the Government to remove the requirement of hiring such a firm. No one has convincingly explained why.

Did the commission simply run out of time? Was the amendment needed to let the PSC take matters into its own hands? Is the PSC currently under strain?

Whatever the answers to all of these questions, the public deserved far better this week. Of this fact, the PSC seems blissfully ignorant.